<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.anandtech.com/show/4195/synology-ds211-smb-nas-review' target='_blank'>http://www.anandtech.com/show/4195/...-smb-nas-review</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"Synology is one of the rapidly rising players in the SMB (Small to Medium Businesses) / SOHO (Small Office &amp; Home Office) NAS market. This market is a highly competitive one with many players like QNAP, Thecus, Netgear, Drobo, LaCie, Seagate and Western Digital. Consumers with a necessity to store and backup their home media collection are also amongst the customers in this market."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1299008619.usr20447.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #d2d2bb;" /></p><p>The way I see it, with Microsoft ceding the SMB and SOHO NAS market to other businesses (Yes, that is what you did when you got rid of Drive Extender, Microsoft.) the market just got much more interesting.&nbsp; While a two-drive system may not seem like a lot at first, keep in mind that three TB drives are becoming more accessible.&nbsp; Unfortunately, while hard drives are cheaper than ever, it seems that the cost of a well performing NAS is not cheap.&nbsp; While power consumption is always a concern, it has often made me wonder, where for the cost of one of these performance NAS devices, you can purchase a low end desktop computer and load it up with NAS software like FreeNAS.&nbsp; Doing so would not be that much more work than setting up something from Synology or Drobo either.&nbsp; Anyone think these are worth the price?</p>

Yeah, that's a tough question to answer. But a 10-12W idle is pretty significant for always-available storage. Even the most stingy of PC-based solutions suck 40W+ idle. Economically speaking, that's $30 to $50 per year difference. Your leftover PC converted into a make-shift NAS? Probably at least 80W idle. All of a sudden you are LOSING money after a year or two compared buying a new $210 DS211J NAS. This one at $410 is a bit steep, though. And the 4-bay at $630+ and 5-bay at $850+ are ludicrous (despite the great reviews).

I guess in the end I'm still waiting for the right replacement for my MediaSmart 470, which has 4 bays and cost me all of $250 on clearance. Luckily, it's still going strong. UNluckily it sucks 55-60W and has now been relegated to backup-only duty (I use LightsOut to bump it on and off during the backup windows).

I took the plunge with the iOmega Netstore 2TB model. It's two 1TB drives that's configured in RAID 1. The setup was reasonably painless. It's supposed to be easily upgradeable (switch the public drive out with a larger drive and copy the backup drive onto it).

I felt for the price ($229US) it was a great value for me. I have one desktop and 3-4 laptops/netbooks using the network in my home at any time. Before the NAS setup, the fasmily's iTunes library was shared from the desktop. Now its on the NAS and I have the drive backed up along with backups of my computers as well.

It also has the feature to turn off the drives when we are at work or asleep.

Annecdotally, my electric bill has gone down $6-8 per month compared to before the NAS was installed and the desktop was on more often, so I'm in the get a NAS camp